Workshop 1.

Despite lots of flu, general ill-health and people needing to work (poor things, on the first Sunday in January), the first workshop was excellently attended. 

We talked about the hideous clichés and presumptions that fly about in relation to gender in this green and pleasant land. Mutton dressed as lamb is always used of women, do you observe? And my favourite mischief-making word - spinster - got good airtime.

Interestingly, the group felt that "boys don't cry" was the most damaging of these casually flung about aphorisms. For the effect both on men (stiff upper lip) and women ("hysterical").

We spoke about things that each sex cannot do under ordinary circumstances.  As things stand, for example, I would struggle to grow a beard. Men cannot have an abortion. Women cannot (tidily) wee standing up (instant flashbacks to a late night pub and my friend Gail excitably recounting her discovery of the She-Wee in advance of a music festival). Nor can they (easily) write their name in the snow with this effluent. (I know that's not quite the right word but I stand by it.) Can only men rape? There's a ten year old attending the workshops so that didn't feel like an age-appropriate discussion.

Outwith my own species, I learnt that both male and female stick insects can lay eggs. Not so much the case for humans, under ordinary circumstances. But that removes a bit of the pressure applied by many an ageing stick insect's "ticking clock".

And we talked a little bit about the things that get in the way of achieving whatever either gender might wish to achieve in life. This tbc.

The sucker punch of the session, for me, happened after everyone had gone. I asked everyone to write the thing that worried them most as a consequence of their gender on a little piece of lined paper. And received the entries in my confession box. 

Peeling open the little pieces of paper when everyone had gone was a window into the brilliant, bold, battered and bruised by life people who'd been sitting round in glorious unsmirched technicolour only moments before. Don't we forget how fragile people are? Don't we (don't I) too easily forget the effort that goes into building up this tough technicolour carapace that tricks the world into thinking that a sunny and sweet disposition is just how you were built?

Even now, thinking about the little pieces of paper, my heart halts a little - momentarily, you'll be relieved to know. I don't know the handwritings so I don't know who wrote what but I'm touched - ridiculously, gratefully touched - by the honesty on these scraps. I must try and return the favour with a rallying cry for gender equality for all.